Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami

It's a strange story to say the least: Salim the coachman lost his voice. If it hadn't happened right before my very eyes, I would never have believed it. Everything started in 1959, in August, in the old quarter of Damascus. Even if I wanted to make up such an incredible story, Damascus would still be the best place to set it. Nowhere but Damascus could such a tale take place.

Salim the coachman is revered in Damascus as one of the city's best storytellers. He encourages his fares to share their stories with him, and then takes them and polishes them for his his next passengers. But suddenly, when he loses his voice, a fairy appears to him and warns him that the gift which has been given to him by providence can be taken away--indeed, it has been taken away. But, she advises, if Salim receives seven unspecified gifts before 30 days have elapsed, the curse will be broken and Salim will have his voice again. After some trial-and-error, Salim's friends intuit that the gifts must also be stories, and so each of them prepares a story to tell Salim, hoping that their stories will give him his voice back.

Damascus Nights is a shaggy, discursive book. It's organized, as you might expect, into seven significant sections, with one story from each friend, but things aren't so simple. Stories are interrupted by other stories, or stories contain other stories nested within them, or people beyond Salim's friends tell stories. The stories are often about storytelling: the restaurant owner tells of the storyteller he has hired to keep his patrons entertained; another tells a story about a king who could speak but not listen; some characters even, like Salim, end up having their voice stolen. Over and over again the stories repeat variations on the same inward theme: how storytelling enlivens us and connects us with others. One of Salim's friends, the former minister, tells a story that is long and tedious, and when the mute Salim thinks of how he might amend it to tell it in his own way, he begins to understand that "a story needs at least two people in order to live."

Damascus Nights is part of a long literary tradition that includes The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, but its clearest antecedent is One Thousand and One Nights, the Arabic-language classic about Scheherazade, who tells innumerable stories each night to her husband so that she might survive another night. Like Scheherazade, who saves the best part of each story for the following night, Schalk understands that the best stories don't fit neat and closed designs; they burst out of their parameters and keep one guessing. Schalk's Damascus is an ancient city, deeply rooted in literary traditions like the Nights, but a diverse one, too, that brings together people of all classes, religions, and backgrounds, united by the stories that create in them a shared audience. It's especially bittersweet to read knowing what a tragic place Damascus has become, racked by strife and civil war. I know little about the city, but I'm guessing it's not--though I hope it might become again--a place where friends can gather in the plazas with strong coffee in the night and listen to each other's tales.

With the addition of Syria, my "countries read" list is up to 81!